11 ms·

At Least 70 Countries Have Had Disinformation Campaigns, Study Finds

145 points by johnny313 7y ago

pharke 7y ago
At least 70 dogs have engaged in barking. Jury still out on if water is wet. Seriously though, who doesn't expect that their government will attempt to cast itself in the best light and smear its enemies? Propaganda has been around since before the dawn of mass media. There is always a cultural myth of our group being the chosen people and having the correct answers to how life should be lived and resources allocated. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, it inspires people and creates stronger bonds between otherwise unrelated individuals. We just need to reign in the negative shit-talking is all. Focus on the positive aspects. Healthy competition between countries as with people is generally positive.
- zaphirplane 7y ago
  The article is about illegal actions or unethical pressure in mostly non democratic countries ( don’t know about Guatemala) I expect a prime minister or president to resign in democratic countries for those actions if they knew about it That is very far from spin, conflicting results in complex policy modeling.
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    Sure, the source is biased, but at least they noticed when this happened: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-24/obama-signs-countering-disinformation-and-propaganda-act-law https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-24/obama-signs-counte... Here's the press release from Sen. Portman himself: https://www.portman.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/president-signs-portman-murphy-counter-propaganda-bill-law https://www.portman.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/presi...
- tyleo 7y ago
  I agree that this is the expected behavior of government. Governments are run by people after all and reflect their own strengths and deficiencies. I think it’s always a bad thing though. Modern governments are so powerful, their actions impact millions. I like your point that each generation has a myth about “being the chosen people”. I think we stand to make the same mistakes as our ancestors, it’s just the impact of those mistakes are now widespread.
- justaguyhere 7y ago
  Propaganda has been around since before the dawn of mass media True, but what is different this time is the cost and reach of propaganda. It is a lot cheaper, easier and faster to send emails, post on FB/Twitter, throw a website up... etc compared to 40-50 years (or even 30) ago when you had to use newspapers and television. What is even more horrific is you can tailor these message down to a individual person
  - roenxi 7y ago
    When was the alternate age when people had access to and revered the truth? That is a trick question; there never was one. Communities have always relied on a highly slanted version of the truth to make decisions. Propaganda and truth have both gotten cheaper to spread. The evidence is that the truth is doing a much better job relative to what it used to (I can see actual visual evidence of what is happening in Hong Kong, for example, in near real time). The downside is that it is cheaper for the government to track individual activities, but that is a slightly separate topic.
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    In my opinion this is one of the best developments of recent decades. People with formerly no voice are at least able to exchange themselves with others and find like-minded individuals. I am very skeptical of people that advocate for a more top down approach to information exchange.
    - ddingus 7y ago
      As am I. Plenty of legitimate voices advocating for public good, let's say as an example, get swept up in these attempts to better centralize and manage information. That's not a good thing.
  - lr4444lr 7y ago
    I think it was a heckuva lot cheaper for most of human history when there was no mass literacy or public schooling or universal suffrage. Perhaps we had a briefly better time than now in the mid-20th century, but what we are seeing now is if anything a slight backslide to the usual state of affairs. In the larger arc of history, I think we're on the better end of things.
- aalleavitch 7y ago
  Is this kind of competition healthy? More and more often I see competition as needlessly wasteful.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  >Seriously though, who doesn't expect that their government will attempt to cast itself in the best light and smear its enemies? There's a lot of people who think of government (either in the general case or their specific government) as an infallible source of all that is good. It's basically a religion to them and they will find a way to hand-wave away this kind of thing no matter how you present it because you can't just tell people that their religion is wrong and expect them to roll over and accept it. Edit: I strive to get bipartisan down-votes. If you think your side is being singled out by my wording please comment and I will try and correct it.
  - smt88 7y ago
    For many of them, it's less likely blind patriotism and more akin to a desire for safety. Your government may do evil things, but if it isn't actively oppressing you, and you have investment in its continuation (land holdings, for example), then you prefer your own evil government over others. Of course, no one wants to believe they selfishly support something evil, so they tell themselves whatever story is necessary. There's also some cognitive confusion in enjoying the benefits of your domestic government, even though its foreign policy is atrocious.
ptah 7y ago
amazon also does this and i'm sure other corporates too. that is a much bigger problem imo
qazpot 7y ago
What is being called "Disinformation Campaign" is simply one of the tools of politics since time immemorial.
- nkozyra 7y ago
  Yes and no. The "tool" here is the internet, effectively the most immediate form of mass communication we've ever known. The ease and efficacy of swaying opinion via this tool incites agents to utilize it more and more often. It has wider reach than, say, propaganda in film or distributed leaflets.
  - nmussy 7y ago
    I'm not completely convinced than its reach is that much wider than previous forms of media. Social networks definitely made the Internet more insidious, with your friends and other "real people" acting as a proxy for disinformation; it's personalized mass printed words and sounds.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    > the internet, effectively the most immediate form of mass communication we've ever known It's a multi-to-multi communication tool though, where a unidirectional medium like radio or TV allowed you to get the message out (while controlling that no other message went out), the internet is messy, there are competing messages and they aren't easily censored, you can't be sure to reach the intended recipient (back in the TV days, most people watched TV and there were only a limited amount of channels; even if you had the power to make the big media companies broadcast your message on the web, tons of people will not visit any of their sites in any given day), and you compete with cat pictures. It's communication by masses, not to masses. Traditionally, "mass communication" meant one-way-media usage to communicate to large parts of the audience.
- baybal2 7y ago
  I think people don't get the etymology. Propaganda is one thing, it was surely there "since time immemorial." Plain lies, and non-genuine political messaging is also from the same opera. What militarised disinformation is something on the whole new level though. The aim of disinformation is to make your enemies do blunders and mistakes. It can be ingeniously crafted, and aimed. For example, Soviets made deliberate decision to reduce secrecy for some of their submarines to warp impression of NATO naval intelligence, so as to sow discord in between political agendas in the West, all without employing any lie. And it worked surprisingly good according declassified US intelligence reports. Above all, it's about intellectually discombobulating your enemies, drowning them in lies, making them loose factual "anchor points" for decision making, and making them to disbelieve their own eyes and ears.
sremani 7y ago
In the age of information - disinformation is a potent weapon. I would be remiss if powerful entities including states and corporations did not use it.
Temasik 7y ago
yes e.g look at BitCoin after they remove BIP 70 BTC is now Bitgold BSV = BitCoin
charlchi 7y ago
I remember Jared Kushner was asked about the Russians ads, he said something along the lines of "that's what the GOP spends in advertising in 3 hours". I don't think 99.99% of people understand the scale to which propaganda and establishment bias penetrates into their lives and daily functioning. "Hate Speech", defined essentially as any form of discrimination whatsoever, has been made illegal in Europe following the growth of the anti-immigration far right. Is this fair towards these parties? Imagine making climate change speech illegal because it hurts the feelings of people who drive cars or eat meat. Would green parties not be discriminated against? How about making speech illegal that suggests increasing taxes on corporations? Where do we stop? There is always an ongoing political battle to steer our thinking. The world is a political place down to the air we breathe, what we eat, what we wear, how we to talk to each other and increasingly even what people we find in our community.
- La1n 7y ago
  >"Hate Speech", defined essentially as any form of discrimination whatsoever, has been made illegal in Europe following the growth of the anti-immigration far right. Source? This is not true in my experience.
  - Synaesthesia 7y ago
    In many countries “hate speech” is illegal, the US is one of the few with truly free speech. Pro Nazi and racial incitement speech is illegal in France, Germany and Austria AFAIK. Here in South Africa too. Even though I’m for free speech, I feel this is understandable and defendable.
    - solinent 7y ago
      Even in the states, there are plenty of exceptions to free speech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce... The US definitely has the most free speech, but you're still restricted in various ways.
    - La1n 7y ago
Synaesthesia 7y ago
From The NY Times. The newspaper which has cheerleaded every single US war
- 0xcafecafe 7y ago
  So does this mean it is self aware now?
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    TFA doesn't seem to include a mea culpa...
- whoopdedo 7y ago
  No. It's from Oxford University.
jessaustin 7y ago
"Reply All" had an episode that touched on an interesting variation of this: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/j4hl36/112-the-prophet https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/j4hl36/112-the-proph...
SCdF 7y ago
Apparently New Zealand is so pure they don't even bother to draw it in on their corruption map[1]. [1] https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/93/2019/09/CyberTroop-Report19.pdf https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/93/201...
- ByThyGrace 7y ago
  Excluding NZ from world maps is a rather frequent mishap, and it has even become a meme. See https://www.reddit.com/r/MapsWithoutNZ/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MapsWithoutNZ/
  - turtlecloud 7y ago
    It’s because they want to hide it for when there all the elites escape their during global nuclear war/ pandemic / zombie apocalypse
ekianjo 7y ago
> Governments are spreading disinformation to discredit political opponents, bury opposing views and interfere in foreign affairs. A funny point of view coming from the NYT. Arent they guilty of doing the exact same thing? They are hardly a neutral outlet.
- mieseratte 7y ago
  Given their leaked transcripts wherein their editor states their one purpose was to takedown Trump, they're clearly a propaganda outlet. It is very much a pot / kettle situation.
  - that_jojo 7y ago
    Wow, so I just decided to do some digging because I hadn't heard about this and I wanted to educate myself. Literally the only thing I can find that paints that transcript in remotely the light you're implying is an absolutely garbage Fox News article referencing a Slate article. That Fox article is 18 sentences long, and is mostly a bunch of op-ed ranting sprinkled with some absolutely mutilated quotes. Ironically, the content of the Slate article paints a picture of the NYT dealing with its readership complaining that they're not tough enough on the administration, and their vigilance and ongoing struggle with remaining as neutral as possible.
PixyMisa 7y ago
Walter Duranty could not be reached for comment.
leftyted 7y ago
I recommend Hannah Arendt's essay Lying in Politics. Summary: 1. Lying has always been considered a valid political tool. It isn't really clear how a government can operate without lying. 2. Lying is deeply related to the human ability to act. Acting involves imagining the world as it does not exist and trying to bring it into existence. Imagining the world as it does not exist is very close to lying (if only to yourself). 3. Lies are often more plausible than reality because the liar knows what his audience wants to hear. 4. History is not composed of facts; it is about collective memory and consensus. Facts exist but history always contains a buried political philosophy that constrains the facts. 5. A significant amount of lying involves fitting reality into overly simplified models. 6. Almost all liars start with self-deception. They often don't know they're lying. 7. Ironically, the people with the most access to information are often in the worst place to determine the truth. Overclassification leads to a situation where cleared officials have far too much information to wade through. The president selects officials who filter information though their own overly simplified models before it reaches him. 8. Lying in order to hide the truth implies a truth, which means that the truth can often be deduced from the lie. 9. We should be extremely wary of highly educated technocrats who attempt to impose a "scientific" viewpoint on political events, always fail, and yet remain utterly convinced by their oversimplified models.
- dandare 7y ago
  > 1. Lying has always been considered a valid political tool. It isn't really clear how a government can operate without lying. Could you expand on this? Why could the government not operate without lying, except for extreme situations like war?
  - hamilyon2 7y ago
    Essentially any kind of state secrets, propaganda (in athoritorian countries is a must), promises of candidates, rallies in support of anything... list goes on.
  - leftyted 7y ago
    It's been a while since I read the essay and I don't exactly remember the distinctions drawn. I'll venture my own opinions: Lying is necessary when trying to move through the world. Governments lie for the same reason people lie. Governments restrict information just like people have internal opinions and thoughts we keep hidden. Governments need to act, which involves imagining the world as it doesn't exist and spreading that imaginary world in order to create a consensus. This is very similar to lying and the boundaries aren't obvious. People don't want a government that tells the truth and will not vote for a candidate who tells the truth. See McGovern vs. Nixon.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
exabrial 7y ago
Only 70? This has been done since since old-testament era politics
blackflame7000 7y ago
Idk if the NYT is in a great position to be throwing rocks at other glass houses given their recent record.

145 points by johnny313 7y ago

At least 70 dogs have engaged in barking. Jury still out on if water is wet. Seriously though, who doesn't expect that their government will attempt to cast itself in the best light and smear its enemies? Propaganda has been around since before the dawn of mass media. There is always a cultural myth of our group being the chosen people and having the correct answers to how life should be lived and resources allocated. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, it inspires people and creates stronger bonds between otherwise unrelated individuals. We just need to reign in the negative shit-talking is all. Focus on the positive aspects. Healthy competition between countries as with people is generally positive.

zaphirplane 7y ago
The article is about illegal actions or unethical pressure in mostly non democratic countries ( don’t know about Guatemala) I expect a prime minister or president to resign in democratic countries for those actions if they knew about it That is very far from spin, conflicting results in complex policy modeling.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  Sure, the source is biased, but at least they noticed when this happened: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-24/obama-signs-countering-disinformation-and-propaganda-act-law https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-24/obama-signs-counte... Here's the press release from Sen. Portman himself: https://www.portman.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/president-signs-portman-murphy-counter-propaganda-bill-law https://www.portman.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/presi...
tyleo 7y ago
I agree that this is the expected behavior of government. Governments are run by people after all and reflect their own strengths and deficiencies. I think it’s always a bad thing though. Modern governments are so powerful, their actions impact millions. I like your point that each generation has a myth about “being the chosen people”. I think we stand to make the same mistakes as our ancestors, it’s just the impact of those mistakes are now widespread.
justaguyhere 7y ago
Propaganda has been around since before the dawn of mass media True, but what is different this time is the cost and reach of propaganda. It is a lot cheaper, easier and faster to send emails, post on FB/Twitter, throw a website up... etc compared to 40-50 years (or even 30) ago when you had to use newspapers and television. What is even more horrific is you can tailor these message down to a individual person
- roenxi 7y ago
  When was the alternate age when people had access to and revered the truth? That is a trick question; there never was one. Communities have always relied on a highly slanted version of the truth to make decisions. Propaganda and truth have both gotten cheaper to spread. The evidence is that the truth is doing a much better job relative to what it used to (I can see actual visual evidence of what is happening in Hong Kong, for example, in near real time). The downside is that it is cheaper for the government to track individual activities, but that is a slightly separate topic.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  In my opinion this is one of the best developments of recent decades. People with formerly no voice are at least able to exchange themselves with others and find like-minded individuals. I am very skeptical of people that advocate for a more top down approach to information exchange.
  - ddingus 7y ago
    As am I. Plenty of legitimate voices advocating for public good, let's say as an example, get swept up in these attempts to better centralize and manage information. That's not a good thing.
- lr4444lr 7y ago
  I think it was a heckuva lot cheaper for most of human history when there was no mass literacy or public schooling or universal suffrage. Perhaps we had a briefly better time than now in the mid-20th century, but what we are seeing now is if anything a slight backslide to the usual state of affairs. In the larger arc of history, I think we're on the better end of things.
aalleavitch 7y ago
Is this kind of competition healthy? More and more often I see competition as needlessly wasteful.
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>Seriously though, who doesn't expect that their government will attempt to cast itself in the best light and smear its enemies? There's a lot of people who think of government (either in the general case or their specific government) as an infallible source of all that is good. It's basically a religion to them and they will find a way to hand-wave away this kind of thing no matter how you present it because you can't just tell people that their religion is wrong and expect them to roll over and accept it. Edit: I strive to get bipartisan down-votes. If you think your side is being singled out by my wording please comment and I will try and correct it.
- smt88 7y ago
  For many of them, it's less likely blind patriotism and more akin to a desire for safety. Your government may do evil things, but if it isn't actively oppressing you, and you have investment in its continuation (land holdings, for example), then you prefer your own evil government over others. Of course, no one wants to believe they selfishly support something evil, so they tell themselves whatever story is necessary. There's also some cognitive confusion in enjoying the benefits of your domestic government, even though its foreign policy is atrocious.

ptah 7y ago

amazon also does this and i'm sure other corporates too. that is a much bigger problem imo

qazpot 7y ago

What is being called "Disinformation Campaign" is simply one of the tools of politics since time immemorial.

nkozyra 7y ago
Yes and no. The "tool" here is the internet, effectively the most immediate form of mass communication we've ever known. The ease and efficacy of swaying opinion via this tool incites agents to utilize it more and more often. It has wider reach than, say, propaganda in film or distributed leaflets.
- nmussy 7y ago
  I'm not completely convinced than its reach is that much wider than previous forms of media. Social networks definitely made the Internet more insidious, with your friends and other "real people" acting as a proxy for disinformation; it's personalized mass printed words and sounds.
- luckylion 7y ago
  > the internet, effectively the most immediate form of mass communication we've ever known It's a multi-to-multi communication tool though, where a unidirectional medium like radio or TV allowed you to get the message out (while controlling that no other message went out), the internet is messy, there are competing messages and they aren't easily censored, you can't be sure to reach the intended recipient (back in the TV days, most people watched TV and there were only a limited amount of channels; even if you had the power to make the big media companies broadcast your message on the web, tons of people will not visit any of their sites in any given day), and you compete with cat pictures. It's communication by masses, not to masses. Traditionally, "mass communication" meant one-way-media usage to communicate to large parts of the audience.
baybal2 7y ago
I think people don't get the etymology. Propaganda is one thing, it was surely there "since time immemorial." Plain lies, and non-genuine political messaging is also from the same opera. What militarised disinformation is something on the whole new level though. The aim of disinformation is to make your enemies do blunders and mistakes. It can be ingeniously crafted, and aimed. For example, Soviets made deliberate decision to reduce secrecy for some of their submarines to warp impression of NATO naval intelligence, so as to sow discord in between political agendas in the West, all without employing any lie. And it worked surprisingly good according declassified US intelligence reports. Above all, it's about intellectually discombobulating your enemies, drowning them in lies, making them loose factual "anchor points" for decision making, and making them to disbelieve their own eyes and ears.

sremani 7y ago

In the age of information - disinformation is a potent weapon. I would be remiss if powerful entities including states and corporations did not use it.

Temasik 7y ago

yes e.g look at BitCoin after they remove BIP 70 BTC is now Bitgold BSV = BitCoin

charlchi 7y ago

I remember Jared Kushner was asked about the Russians ads, he said something along the lines of "that's what the GOP spends in advertising in 3 hours". I don't think 99.99% of people understand the scale to which propaganda and establishment bias penetrates into their lives and daily functioning. "Hate Speech", defined essentially as any form of discrimination whatsoever, has been made illegal in Europe following the growth of the anti-immigration far right. Is this fair towards these parties? Imagine making climate change speech illegal because it hurts the feelings of people who drive cars or eat meat. Would green parties not be discriminated against? How about making speech illegal that suggests increasing taxes on corporations? Where do we stop? There is always an ongoing political battle to steer our thinking. The world is a political place down to the air we breathe, what we eat, what we wear, how we to talk to each other and increasingly even what people we find in our community.

La1n 7y ago
>"Hate Speech", defined essentially as any form of discrimination whatsoever, has been made illegal in Europe following the growth of the anti-immigration far right. Source? This is not true in my experience.
- Synaesthesia 7y ago
  In many countries “hate speech” is illegal, the US is one of the few with truly free speech. Pro Nazi and racial incitement speech is illegal in France, Germany and Austria AFAIK. Here in South Africa too. Even though I’m for free speech, I feel this is understandable and defendable.
  - solinent 7y ago
    Even in the states, there are plenty of exceptions to free speech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce... The US definitely has the most free speech, but you're still restricted in various ways.
  - La1n 7y ago

Synaesthesia 7y ago

From The NY Times. The newspaper which has cheerleaded every single US war

0xcafecafe 7y ago
So does this mean it is self aware now?
- jessaustin 7y ago
  TFA doesn't seem to include a mea culpa...
whoopdedo 7y ago
No. It's from Oxford University.

jessaustin 7y ago

"Reply All" had an episode that touched on an interesting variation of this: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/j4hl36/112-the-prophet https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/j4hl36/112-the-proph...

SCdF 7y ago

Apparently New Zealand is so pure they don't even bother to draw it in on their corruption map[1]. [1] https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/93/2019/09/CyberTroop-Report19.pdf https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/93/201...

ByThyGrace 7y ago
Excluding NZ from world maps is a rather frequent mishap, and it has even become a meme. See https://www.reddit.com/r/MapsWithoutNZ/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MapsWithoutNZ/
- turtlecloud 7y ago
  It’s because they want to hide it for when there all the elites escape their during global nuclear war/ pandemic / zombie apocalypse

ekianjo 7y ago

> Governments are spreading disinformation to discredit political opponents, bury opposing views and interfere in foreign affairs. A funny point of view coming from the NYT. Arent they guilty of doing the exact same thing? They are hardly a neutral outlet.

mieseratte 7y ago
Given their leaked transcripts wherein their editor states their one purpose was to takedown Trump, they're clearly a propaganda outlet. It is very much a pot / kettle situation.
- that_jojo 7y ago
  Wow, so I just decided to do some digging because I hadn't heard about this and I wanted to educate myself. Literally the only thing I can find that paints that transcript in remotely the light you're implying is an absolutely garbage Fox News article referencing a Slate article. That Fox article is 18 sentences long, and is mostly a bunch of op-ed ranting sprinkled with some absolutely mutilated quotes. Ironically, the content of the Slate article paints a picture of the NYT dealing with its readership complaining that they're not tough enough on the administration, and their vigilance and ongoing struggle with remaining as neutral as possible.

PixyMisa 7y ago

Walter Duranty could not be reached for comment.

leftyted 7y ago

I recommend Hannah Arendt's essay Lying in Politics. Summary: 1. Lying has always been considered a valid political tool. It isn't really clear how a government can operate without lying. 2. Lying is deeply related to the human ability to act. Acting involves imagining the world as it does not exist and trying to bring it into existence. Imagining the world as it does not exist is very close to lying (if only to yourself). 3. Lies are often more plausible than reality because the liar knows what his audience wants to hear. 4. History is not composed of facts; it is about collective memory and consensus. Facts exist but history always contains a buried political philosophy that constrains the facts. 5. A significant amount of lying involves fitting reality into overly simplified models. 6. Almost all liars start with self-deception. They often don't know they're lying. 7. Ironically, the people with the most access to information are often in the worst place to determine the truth. Overclassification leads to a situation where cleared officials have far too much information to wade through. The president selects officials who filter information though their own overly simplified models before it reaches him. 8. Lying in order to hide the truth implies a truth, which means that the truth can often be deduced from the lie. 9. We should be extremely wary of highly educated technocrats who attempt to impose a "scientific" viewpoint on political events, always fail, and yet remain utterly convinced by their oversimplified models.

dandare 7y ago
> 1. Lying has always been considered a valid political tool. It isn't really clear how a government can operate without lying. Could you expand on this? Why could the government not operate without lying, except for extreme situations like war?
- hamilyon2 7y ago
  Essentially any kind of state secrets, propaganda (in athoritorian countries is a must), promises of candidates, rallies in support of anything... list goes on.
- leftyted 7y ago
  It's been a while since I read the essay and I don't exactly remember the distinctions drawn. I'll venture my own opinions: Lying is necessary when trying to move through the world. Governments lie for the same reason people lie. Governments restrict information just like people have internal opinions and thoughts we keep hidden. Governments need to act, which involves imagining the world as it doesn't exist and spreading that imaginary world in order to create a consensus. This is very similar to lying and the boundaries aren't obvious. People don't want a government that tells the truth and will not vote for a candidate who tells the truth. See McGovern vs. Nixon.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

exabrial 7y ago

Only 70? This has been done since since old-testament era politics

blackflame7000 7y ago

Idk if the NYT is in a great position to be throwing rocks at other glass houses given their recent record.